The application generally relates to a tool for short circuiting a cable and system and method therefor. More specifically, the application discloses a device for rendering safe a firing circuit for an explosive device.
Upon accessing a target one of the initial actions of a render-safe procedure (RSP) for an electrical firing system is to attack or interrupt the initiator and/or detonator cables. Options may be to cut, short, or measure to determine if cutting or short-circuiting is appropriate. Each of these approaches may at times have merit depending on the available time and the relative sophistication of the system.
Subsequent to an RSP for explosive devices, the detonation initiator device may be still attached to stubs of the cables and need to be electrically short-circuited or rendered safe to protect against initiation from static discharge or other inadvertent current flow.
As access may be extremely limited initially, only a few of many cables may be accessible to be short-circuited, or attacked, unless or until access holes may be opened or created. For many initiator cable types, even when access is available, short-circuiting can be difficult due to various conditions, e.g., small or tough cables, poor environment, etc., and may require minutes for disabling each cable, suggesting complex multi-cable systems could take a considerable amount of time to manually attack and fully disable, e.g., from tens of minutes to hours.
High-energy firing systems for exploding bridgewires (EBWs) or slapper initiators may be susceptible to short-circuiting or arcing in one of the firing circuit cables. In experiments using shorts against the firing cables in systems using inert EBW, or bare headers, varying amounts of smoke and noise when fired suggested that current flow and energy distribution was being compromised, thus affecting system performance.
Due to the complexities of LRC circuits that comprise EBW firing systems, it was considered that for systems such as in a light weight or weak-link system an attack such as this may be relied upon to disable, or safe, the entire firing system.
What is needed is a render-safe procedure, or RSP, that provides a substitute for cutting firing-circuit cables during initial RSP, which provides additional time for emergency personnel to determine appropriate follow-on processes.